Juvenile male rubythroat

[Christopher Marek]

Camera Model: Canon EOS 30D
Date/Time: 2010:09:26 09:01:38
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 20
Exposure mode: Manual
Metering mode: Spot
Drive mode: Single frame shooting
ISO: 100
Lens: EF500mm f/4L IS USM
Focal length: 500mm
AF mode: Manual Focus
3 Vivitar 252 compact flashes at full power

[Katie Rupp]

Perhaps a bit tight but great detail, sharp and a nice pose...love those little feet. On my monitor it seems to have a magenta cast?

[Arthur Morris]

I like this quite a bit but it is too dark overall. Way too dark. I wish that you had been a bit to your right for a better angle to the bird. Very sharp with pleasing wing position.

Did you put sugar water on the blossom?

I love the BKGR. Did you have a flash on it?

There was lots of MAGENTA in the wings that I eliminated for the re-post in HUE-SAT.

Welcome and thanks a ton for your membership support.

[Christopher Marek]

I like this quite a bit but it is too dark overall. Way too dark. I wish that you had been a bit to your right for a better angle to the bird. Very sharp with pleasing wing position.

Did you put sugar water on the blossom?

I love the BKGR. Did you have a flash on it?

There was lots of MAGENTA in the wings that I eliminated for the re-post in HUE-SAT.

Welcome and thanks a ton for your membership support.

I have a super hard time recognizing color cast problems, and I tend to post process my images too dark also. (histogram is fine). I posted an inca dove the other day and got the same critique for it. It was a HUGE relief to hear that you like my background. I spent a huge amount of effort creating a painted cloth backdrop. Yes there is a flash dedicated to the backdrop. It is crucial however just how close the flash is placed to the back drop I have found out. Also, since there are reddish blotches in my background, I use red flowers for my hummingbird. Had I used a yellow flower with this BG, the BG would have looked wrong . I placed a tiny amount of sugar water in the flower after each visit by the bird. At first he fed from the top of the flower like normal. Eventually he saw the sugar water seeping out at the base of the flower and he began to feed from the base (to my dismay) which placed him too darn low in the photo. I also have trouble with all this head angle body angle stuff. To me the bird appears quite evenly parallel to the camera, which I assume is desirable.

[Arthur Morris]

Yes, the BKGR is killer. Yes to dismay over the sugar water leak :) At least you knew to be dismayed. The bird's body here is parallel to your position but the head is angled ever so slightly away from you, perhaps 1/2 of 1 degree.... Do check out all of the quizzes in the Head Angle Fine Points thread in Educational Resources.

ps: the best head angle here would have been 1 or two degrees towards you :)

pps: Do you know how to use the calibration strip?

[Christopher Marek]

I have seen the calibration strip but do not know what to do with it.

[Arthur Morris]

Make it a habit to check the calibration strip at the bottom of the page. You should be able to differentiate the subtle shades of the two lightest boxes and the two darkest boxes... If you can't you need to tilt your monitor until you can, a few degrees at a time. If you still can't you will need to recalibrate your monitor.

Is your monitor color calibrated?

[Christopher Marek]

Make it a habit to check the calibration strip at the bottom of the page. You should be able to differentiate the subtle shades of the two lightest boxes and the two darkest boxes... If you can't you need to tilt your monitor until you can, a few degrees at a time. If you still can't you will need to recalibrate your monitor.

Is your monitor color calibrated?

Ahhhh, now I get it. Yep, tilting the monitor while looking at the c strip looks better. I have not color calibrated the monitor. Hope that is easy to.

[Arthur Morris]

Easy, but you need to buy some software....